


We Are Living the Prologue

by earthinmywindow



Series: Dream Runners [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Child Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Sibling Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 07:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthinmywindow/pseuds/earthinmywindow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight-year old Reiner Leonhart lives an almost catalog perfect life with his Mom and Dad and little sister Annie until a barely remembered dream and concern for the boy who recently moved into the apartment next door become the catalysts for big changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Living the Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of what I hope will be a series about the Titan Trio of Reiner, Annie, and Bertolt. It is an AU with a contemporary, non-specific US setting. A word of warning, this series will include Reiner/Bertolt AND Bertolt/Annie in more or less equal measure, so if you can't stand either of those pairings it probably won't appeal to you.

_Reiner._  
  
 _Reiner._  
  
The voice was soft, warm as an embrace and earnest as a prayer. The word it spoke was his simple name. In front of Reiner Leonhart’s eyes, tiny motes of dust swam, suspended in golden, liquid light. He blinked his eyes. Once. Twice. There was nothing else to see. Just the dust. Just the light. A rippling ghost of shadow somewhere beyond, maybe, but too distant for him to be sure. When he tried to sit up—for he realized now that he was lying on his back—he found himself immobilized, his half-formed muscles too weak to throw off whatever restraints were wrapped around him. But he didn’t feel compelled to struggle. He was at perfect ease.  
  
 _My Reiner_ , the voice said. It was not quite a woman’s or a man’s voice and it seemed to come from far away and from inside his head at the same time. The sound of it made him lonely and euphoric and hungry and safe. _You are mine, Reiner. Always. I will never let him have you for as long as I live. You belong to me. Always. My precious Reiner Braun._  
  
 _Reiner Braun._  
  
“Reiner? Br...”  
  
With a sharp inhale, Reiner shuddered awake. He was in his bed, Pokémon sheets bunched up around him, limbs thrown out at odd angles. It was still nighttime, 1:04AM according to the digital clock on his night stand. A gibbous moon was perfectly centered in the frame of his window.  
  
“You okay, bro?” asked the tiny voice that had somehow managed to pierce his slumber. His little sister Annie stood by his bedside, her moonlit face as round and silver-white as a dish of milk. She was hugging a love-worn plush wolf to her chest, a lumpy, matted rag of a thing with one of its plastic eyes chewed off.  
  
“Y-yeah,” Reiner said, as the last bits of his consciousness emerged from sleep. He’d been trying to hold onto what he’d been dreaming—it felt like it was something important—to take it back with him into the wakeful world. But grasping the dream was like trying to grab a handful tadpoles from a pond; as his grip tightened, they wriggled out between his fingers. When he uncurled his fist, his hand was empty, the dream forgotten. He propped himself up, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and gave his full attention over to his sister. “Is something wrong, Annie?”  
  
“I had a bad dream,” she told him calmly. Just six years old, Annie never showed fear on her face, even when confessing a nightmare. Her mouth was a tight line, her eyes shrewd and serious beneath a wispy veil of blonde hair. “Can Luna and I sleep with you, Reiner?”  
  
“Of course you can,” he said groggily, lifting the flap of his comforter with one hand and waving her under with the other. “Climb in.”  
  
Annie said nothing as she crawled under the comforter and tucked her small body against his. Once she was thoroughly nestled in she mumbled, “Thank you, Reiner.”  
  
He put his arm around her and petted her back soothingly, the way he figured big brothers had been doing since little cave girls first dreamed of saber-toothed tigers. Annie scrunched closer. She was warm and Reiner could feel her heart beating fast. As mature as she tried to act, she really was just a little kid. “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked.  
  
“Okay,” she said without hesitation, and then proceeded to spill the details into the small gap between her face and his chest. “I dreamed that the witch next door put a spell on me. It made you and Dad and Mom forget who I was and I couldn’t live here anymore. And I had to live in the park and it rained on me and snowed on me and Brutus tried to eat me. And...” Her voice grew progressively more distressed as she told the story until by the end she actually sounded like a six-year old ought to when describing a horrible dream. Her small hands twisted in the fabric of his shirt.  
  
“It’s okay,” Reiner gentled. “Brutus is just a dog. Not a very nice dog, but Mr. Smith always keeps him on a leash. And Mrs. Hoover—” The words caught in his throat like something sticky when he thought about the woman who lived in the next apartment over. “Mrs. Hoover is not a witch,” he managed to say, which was the nicest claim he could make about her that wasn’t an outright lie.  
  
“Then why is she so mean?” Annie asked in a voice that was more sad than frightened.  
  
Reiner wanted to tell his sister that their neighbor wasn’t really mean, that all the yelling and screaming and crashes of thrown objects that they’d heard through their walls didn’t prove anything. And who could say that they did? Maybe the woman was just getting really angry at her television; maybe all that rage was directed at Judge Judy or Jerry Springer. But just thinking that felt like a lie. From a pit of wretched certainty deep inside him, Reiner knew that Mrs. Hoover’s target was a real person, the only other person who lived in that apartment. In answer to his sister’s question, he whispered into her hair, “I don’t know, Annie.”  
  
She waited a moment and then asked him, “Do you think we should tell Dad and Mom?”  
  
Another question Reiner didn’t have an answer to. He didn’t know if their parents had heard any of the things he and Annie had; Mrs. Hoover and her son had only moved in a couple weeks ago and the incidents so far always seemed to occur in the afternoon, during the short span of hours when the Leonhart children were home but their parents were not. “Maybe she’s still cranky from moving,” Reiner said, trying to infuse the words with optimism he didn’t actually feel. “Maybe she’ll be nicer once they’ve gotten settled.” They were stupid, stupid meaningless words, the sort Annie could always see right through.  
  
“I wonder if he’s sad,” she quietly said. “The boy. Because his mom is so mean to him. I think about him sometimes.”  
  
“Yeah,” Reiner sighed. _Me too_ , he thought. He’d seen the little boy a few times in the hallway outside their apartments and once in the elevator. Only the first time did Reiner try to talk to the boy, introducing himself with a cheery smile and an extended hand. The boy had tucked his chin shyly to his chest and wiggled his fingers in a tentative wave, but before he got a chance to even say his name, Mrs. Hoover snatched up his wrist and yanked him roughly away as she hissed out a scolding. _“Stop bothering the neighbors, you dimwit. Now come along, you have chores to do.”_  
  
Reiner still didn’t know the boy’s name, though he did know that he was in the first grade because he saw the boy at school sometimes from a distance, on the playground or in the cafeteria as one class left and the other arrived. He was younger than Reiner would have guessed from his height. A tall, awkward, smudgy boy whose worn-out clothes were always way too big or too small for him and had pictures of cartoon characters that hadn’t been popular in years. He was always alone when Reiner saw him, at a lunch table surrounded by five empty chairs or crouched in the dirt beneath the jungle gym. Didn’t he have any friends?  
  
Reiner thought about him a lot.  
  
“Let’s just wait a few days and see if it happens again,” he told Annie. “If it does, we’ll tell them.” Both options—keeping it a secret or tattling—made his insides feel like they were being wrung out like a dishtowel. What if he told their parents and they didn’t believe him and he wound up getting in trouble? Or worse, what if he somehow got Mrs. Hoover’s son in trouble? What if she hit him? The witch next door—despite what he’d said, his imagination effortlessly cast her in the role from Annie’s nightmare—was the one who should get in trouble. But grownups didn’t often get in trouble, especially not from little kids telling on them. Unfair as it was, that just wasn’t how the world worked. What Reiner really wanted was for the horrible noises to just stop, for the stupid lie he’d told to turn out true and the little boy to knock on their door with a big smile on his face and ask if Reiner wanted to play. Why couldn’t life go the way he wanted it to?  
  
A moist breath lapped his neck as Annie yawned. “That sounds... oh... kay,” she said in a sleepy voice. “Goodnight, Reiner. I love... you.”  
  
“I love you back,” he said. But he was pretty sure she was already asleep.  
  
Whatever dreams Reiner had after drifting back into sleep, none of them left any impressions that he took back with him. Strangely, though, when he awoke, blinking dazedly at the golden sunlight of a brand new day, he found that something from his earlier dream had stayed with him after all: Reiner Braun. In the dream, that was his name.  
  
Annie wasn’t in his bed, which made him wonder for just a second if he had dreamed up her late night visit as well. But then he saw a long strand of hair on his pillow and the almost certainly real memory of their conversation flowed back into him. They’d talked about the boy next door and his awful mom.  
  
He found Annie with their mother and father in the kitchen, the three of them going about their breakfast routines within the three tiny dimensions of the room—Dad in his policeman’s uniform, banging cabinets open and closed in search of a clean coffee mug, Mom bumping into him as she put together the kids’ healthy lunches, and Annie at the table, slowly chewing her Froot Loops, her eyes intent on the word find on the back of the box and her short legs kicking lazily above the floor. Leonhart mornings were always some minor variation on this scene. All of them blond and attractive and happy, they could be a family right out of a department store catalog, if only they lived in a house instead of an apartment, and maybe had a golden retriever instead of a cat.  
  
“You overslept again,” Annie said blandly, not bothering to take her eyes off her puzzle.  
  
“Not by much,” he said as he pulled out the chair across from her and sat down in front of a waiting empty bowl. Luna was slumped next to Annie’s glass of orange juice and starred impassively at him with her single lifeless eye. Another morning fixture. He reached for the box of cereal and had to winkle it from Annie’s surprisingly strong grip.  
  
“Hey, I wasn’t done with that!” she said, jutting her lip petulantly. Reiner fixed her with a look of stern brotherly reproach and her pout softened. Neither of them would speak of her getting into his bed last night, out of stubborn younger sibling pride on her part and chivalrous older sibling compassion on his. And if they never heard any more violent noises from next door, they would never have to revisit the talk they’d had, though Reiner doubted that they—or rather, their young neighbor—would be so lucky. Reiner tried not to think about it.  
  
“Hurry up and eat breakfast, honey,” Mom said. “We’re already running late. Oh, but chew thoroughly because you don’t want to choke.” She always said they were running late, no matter how much they actually had left, and when Reiner looked up at the clock on the stove it confirmed that he was right on schedule to eat at his usual pace.  
  
“Mom, I’m eight years old,” he said over the soft rustle of Froot Loops falling into his bowl. “I’m too big to be called honey.”  
  
She sighed through a wistful smile. “I know, I know. But you’ll always be my honey. You’re my precious boy, Reiner.”  
  
Reiner felt a hot flush of embarrassment that was quickly overtaken by a startling wave of familiarity. Something about what his mother had just said—he couldn’t tell if it was the sound of her voice or the words themselves—brought the leftover fragment of his dream into the forefront of his mind. He still only remembered that one small bit, the name that was his and not his, but now it took on a disquieting feeling of urgency in his brain.  
  
Reiner Braun. His name was Reiner Braun. _No_ , he thought, fighting back against the dream memory. _My name is Reiner Leonhart._  
  
He took a bite of cereal, hoping his unease would pass, but it didn’t, and the near silence that had fallen in the kitchen made him feel like the rest of the family all knew what he was thinking about, that they knew something he didn’t and were not going to tell him. Well, if they weren’t talking then he would have to because this quiet was unbearable.  
  
“What does Braun mean?” he asked.  
  
Dad blew away a plume of steam rising from his mug of coffee. “It’s depends on how it’s spelled,” he said, pausing to take a sip. “The word brawn, with a w, means strength. Have you heard the expression ‘brains and brawn?’ But in the case of your mom’s maiden name, spelled with a u, it means brown.” He slid his wife a sly smile. “Even if she likes to claim otherwise.”  
  
“Oh shut up, Auggie,” Mom said with mock indignation. “I do not.” She sounded like a kid and was smirking like one, too.  
  
Reiner felt a spark of intuition, like he was very close to deciphering the meaning of his dream if he could just connect the pieces together. He asked, “What’s a maiden name?”  
  
“It means that was her last name before she stole mine,” said Dad.  
  
Mom closed the gap between the two of them and leaned into him playfully. Neither was very tall, but Dad still had several inches on her so she had to rise up on her toes and stretch to put her face right in front of his as she said, “You’re just lucky you have such a cool last name, Mr. Leonhart.” The tips of their noses touched.  
  
Reiner looked away, shrinking sheepishly in his seat. Lovey-dovey displays of affection always made him feel awkward and flustered, even when perpetrated by his parents—no, _especially_ when perpetrated by his parents. He was glad that they were in love, but this was cringeworthy stuff. He was certain that his attitude was normal for an eight-year old boy. If he had a normal little sister, she would probably find it cute and sweet, but instead he had Annie, who just rolled her wide blue eyes and said, “Get a room you two.” Then she aimed a glare across the table at him and hissed, “Why’d you have to ask that and make them act all gross and mushy?”  
  
Having apparently overheard the comment, Mom and Dad pulled back, both still grinning guiltily like two idiots who’d been caught in the middle of a prank. “Sorry kids,”  Dad said.  
  
“Did you see that word in a book?” Mom asked upon regaining her composure.  
  
Reiner shook his head. “No,” he said. “I had a dream last night—or, at least I think I did—that somebody was calling me Reiner Braun. And that was my name. In the dream I knew it somehow. I guess I must have overheard somebody saying that it used to be your name, Mom.” That was the most logical explanation and he’d chosen to believe it, if for no other reason than because it was easy. Yes, that had to be it. Dream interpretation successfully completed.  
  
“What a lame dream,” Annie said, punctuating it with a snort.  
  
But Reiner didn’t process the comment because in that moment his focus was entirely on his mother’s face, which had drained of color so suddenly that he thought she might be about to throw up or faint. No, that wasn’t it. It was something else, something he hadn’t recognized immediately because he’d never seen the emotion on his mother’s features: panic. He’d caught Mom in a moment of panic. And it really was just a moment, even less than a moment, before the bloodless mask of shock evaporated and her maternally sweet expression came back.  
  
“That is an odd thing to dream about,” she said. “If your dad had wanted my name when we got married, though, I suppose we all would be Brauns instead of Leonharts. Isn’t that right dear?” She cast her gaze on Dad.  
  
“Oh, uh, yes,” he said. He clearly had been distracted by some other thought and had not been paying close attention. “Would you look at the time? You kids better go and get dressed for school now.”  
  
“Piggyback me, Daddy,” Annie said, making it sound more like a demand than a request.  
  
Dad chuckled; he never could say no to her. “Sure thing, sweetie.” He stooped down next to Annie, but before she climbed onto his shoulders, she shot Reiner a furtive look that he knew meant she wanted to talk to him later, in private.  
  
Reiner had only eaten a few bites of cereal but that was just fine since he’d lost his appetite. Mom and Dad were acting strange and there was still the situation with the neighbors weighing heavy on his mind. And what did Annie have to say to him? What could she possibly know about anything? He held in a sigh, steeled himself, and went to get dressed.  
  
“You’ll be hungry way before lunch,” Mom called after him, but Reiner didn’t care.  
  
—  
  
Even though Maria Rose Elementary School was only three blocks away from their apartment building, Mom steadfastly refused to let Reiner and Annie make the short walk unaccompanied, and since most days neither she nor Dad had time to walk with them, Mom usually just dropped them off on her way to work. In the afternoons, she’d come pick them up on a late lunch break, take them home and lock them up safe, and then hurry back to the law office where she worked as a paralegal.  
  
“Have a good day at school, kids,” she said as they exited the backseat of the old Toyota. “Be safe and behave. I love you, Annie, Reiner.” There was just the tiniest change in the pitch of her voice when she said his name; Reiner probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if he wasn’t already suspicious and hyper-vigilant. “I’ll be here to pick you up at the usual time,” she added through the rolled-down front window.  
  
“We know the drill,” Annie said impatiently. “See ya later, alligator.” That was Annie’s code for saying ‘goodbye and I love you, too,’ without actually having to say it.  
  
“In a while, crocodile,” Mom replied. Then she rolled up the window and drove away.  
  
Reiner immediately rounded on Annie. “So what was that look you gave me? And don’t do the bratty thing where you say ‘what look?’ because you know what I’m talking about.” It was early November and the morning air was cold enough that their breaths clotted into soft white puffs in front of their faces, not the sort of weather he wanted to spend extra time standing around in, but he needed her answer.  
  
“They’re lying to you,” she said in her cool, even way. “Mom and Dad, I mean.” Annie had a habit of adding clarification when none was needed.  
  
“About what?” Reiner asked.  
  
Annie just shrugged. “I dunno, but they’re definitely lying to you about something. I can taste it.”  
  
“You can’t taste lies, Annie.” Seriously, Reiner found her so frustrating sometimes.  
  
“Yes I can,” she said haughtily. “And I tasted a big one in the kitchen. I think it has to do with Mom’s last name.” She paused to think and then her face lit up with epiphany. “Hey, maybe you’re a bastard.”  
  
Reiner winced. He wasn’t surprised that Annie knew the word bastard, precocious as she was, but to hear it slip so casually out of her kindergardener mouth was mildly perturbing. “You really think Mom and Dad had me before they got married?”  
  
Another shrug. “Maybe. Maybe that’s why they had to get married. Maybe you were an ‘oops’ baby.”  
  
“Yeesh! How do you even learn about these things, Annie?”  
  
Shrug number three, this one accompanied by a ‘wow big brother you really are dumb’ look. “Same way every other kid does, friends and TV.”  
  
With narrowed eyes, Reiner appraised his sister’s expression, searching for any hint that she was joking. It wasn’t easy; her poker face was carved out of stone. “You don’t know anything,” he said smugly. “Mom isn’t the type who would have a baby first and then get married. She’s so wholesome and responsible and, well, lame.”  
  
“True,” said Annie. “But sometimes adults, even lame ones, lie and hide certain things about their lives.”  
  
As soon as she’d said it, Reiner’s thoughts seamlessly shifted from his own mother to the mother next door. Mrs. Hoover wouldn’t tell anyone that she spent the hours between three and five on most week days screaming at her son, Reiner was sure of that. And if he told Mom and Dad about it and they confronted the woman, she would lie and lie and lie. If she could lie about something as awful as that, why couldn’t his Mom lie about his birth? Then he realized that this was probably exactly what Annie had intended him to think about. It was funny, when she tried too hard to sound grown-up and smart, she usually just sounded like a brat, but in moments like these, when she simply spoke the undecorated truth that was inside her, she was surprisingly trenchant.  
  
Worry must have shown on his face, or maybe he’d just been silent for too long, because Annie chose that moment to reach out her small hand and touch his arm reassuringly. “Don’t feel bad about it, Reiner,” she said softly. “Even if you were an ‘oops’ baby and that was the reason Mom and Dad had to get married, they’re obviously disgustingly in love and want to be together forever. And if they hadn’t gotten married, they wouldn’t have had me. So if it’s true, that means you’re the reason I exist.”  
  
That earned her a smile. “When you put it that way, Annie, I guess I owe the world an apology,” Reiner teased. “But how could I have known the terror that would be unleashed because of me?” He laughed and tousled her hair.  
  
“Ha ha. You’re soooo funny,” she said sarcastically, swatting his hand away. Then she turned soft again and said, “But I’m glad I have a big brother to look out for me.”  
  
What she didn’t say, what she didn’t need to say, was that the boy who lived next door had nobody.  
  
“Hey Reiner,” a boy with big front teeth and curly brown hair called from nearby. “You coming to class or you gonna just hang out here with this kindergarten baby.”  
  
“Bite me, Stuart!” Annie snarled.  
  
“Yeah, I’m coming,” Reiner told his classmate. He turned back to Annie. “See you after school. Don’t beat anyone up today, okay?”  
  
Her lips bent into an upside-down v shape and a crinkle appeared on her nose.  
  
“And, uh, thank you,” Reiner said, which melted her scowl instantly.  
  
For the rest of the day, Reiner tried his best not to think about his dream or his neighbors. He had a certain reputation to maintain at school. Reiner Leonhart: outgoing, all boy, friend to everyone, best athlete in his grade. He was not one of those “sensitive” kids, who read books at recess and loved art class and worried about things. But, as he soon discovered, the nature of anxiety was that the harder you tried not to think about it, the more space it took up in your brain. By the time recess came around, his twin worries were like two enormous tigers circling restlessly inside the too small cage of his skull.  
  
Currently, the dream—and more so his mother’s reaction to it—was dominating. His friends were talking excitedly about kickball teams as they tugged on their jackets to go outside, but Reiner was pondering if there was any way he could find out for sure if he’d been born a bastard. Annie was absolutely right, of course, that it didn’t matter which came first, wedding or baby, but he felt an inexplicable, compulsive need to know if his parents had been deceiving him all his life. It was a matter of trust, of faith. And besides that, he had a vague feeling that there was more to his dream than just that name, parts he couldn’t remember. It _meant_ something, he just knew it, and he had to investigate further. But how?  
  
His line of thought was interrupted by the arresting jolt of cold air as he stepped outside. The corpses of innumerable leaves had turned the ground into a patchwork of red and orange and yellow that crunched underfoot. The sky was overcast but the sunlight diffusing through the quilt of clouds was bright enough that he had to squint against it.  
  
“You’ll be on my team, right Reiner?” Stuart said.  
  
“No way!” Theo responded. “He played on your team last time. He’s with us today. Isn’t that right, Reiner?”  
  
“I guess,” Reiner said absently, not even thinking about which boy he was answering. Ordinarily, he actually cared about whose team he was on, but today it didn’t seem to matter much as long as the game gave his brain something to do besides think.  
  
He was walking to the all-purpose ballgame field with the other kids in his class when he saw the familiar hunched shape at the center of the jungle gym and his feet stopped automatically, as if they’d been screwed to the ground. Mrs. Hoover’s son was sitting in the dirt, his knees hugged to his chest and a book clutched in his hands. Even from a distance, Reiner could see thready holes in the boy’s jeans and that he wore a short-sleeved shirt with no jacket over it. He had to be freezing out here.  
  
Another boy, one Reiner didn’t recognize, approached the jungle gym. The newcomer leaned on the metal bars with outspread arms, spiderlike and predatory. He said something to Hoover, and though Reiner couldn’t pick out his actual words, his tone was distinctly vicious. Hoover said something in response and the other boy kicked a rock at him, hard, and it hit him in the arm he’d lifted just in time to shield his face. A rage like he’d never felt before suddenly filled Reiner’s belly. His fists clenched so tightly at his sides that his fingernails bit into his palms. He wanted to run over there and shove that kid to the ground, make him taste dirt. And he might have actually done it if one of his friends hadn’t yelled at that precise moment.  
  
“Hurry up, Leonhart!”  
  
Reiner swiveled his head towards the field to see his classmates already split into teams, all just waiting on him. “In a sec,” he said. He turned back to look at the jungle gym, but the Hoover boy and his bully were both gone. Something inside Reiner deflated and his hands unclenched. He should have acted quicker. He should have gone straight to the jungle gym, should have offered his jacket to his neighbor and asked him his name. He should have, he should have, he should have. But now it was too late.  
  
Carrying that sense of failure stoically within him, Reiner went to join his friends. For the first time ever, his team lost.  
  
The remainder of the school day he spent mired in regret. In fact, he’d been so engrossed by his imagination’s endlessly looping replay of what happened at recess that he completely forgot about his possible illegitimacy until he and Annie were home alone and the opportunity to look through their parents’ unguarded things presented itself. That’s right, before recess he’d been thinking about what evidence there might be to prove that he was or was not, in fact, a bastard.  
  
Annie sat on the couch watching cartoons and eating a particularly loud and crisp-sounding apple, filthy Luna balanced on her knee. She appeared to be fully engaged in the world of the Powerpuff Girls so Reiner figured that as long as he moved swiftly and quietly, he could slip into Mom and Dad’s room, snoop around a bit, and get out before the episode was over. Annie wouldn’t even notice, which was good because he really didn’t want her to know that he was still hung up on this. The last thing he wanted was a lecture about moving on delivered by a six-year old. After one more glance to make sure his sister’s eyes were fixed squarely on the television screen, he made his move on tiptoes.  
  
The room smelled parenty—there was really no other way to describe it—a spicy blend of spray starch and aftershave and perfume. There were no windows in this room so Reiner had no choice but to turn on the light. He felt like a cat burglar, sneaking around like this, except he didn’t know exactly what it was he was looking for. Wedding photos, maybe; there was a framed one hanging above the couch of Mom and Dad beaming at each other in white gown and tuxedo, but that was the only one Reiner had ever seen. Maybe they hid the others because there was a conspicuous baby boy in every shot.  
  
He dropped softly to the floor and groped under the bed until his fingers found the lip of the plastic tub where Mom and Dad kept important things like receipts and report cards. Or at least that is what he guessed they kept in it, since he’d only seen them tucking papers inside from outside in the hall and had never actually glimpsed the contents. Drawing in a deep breath, he pried off the tupperware lid.  
  
Yep, there were old report cards in there, his and Annie’s. There were also a lot of incomprehensible adult things, folded letters with logos for Visa and Bank of America printed on them, a piece of thick paper with the words Associates Degree printed in fancy script. All of it was just slopped in the tub, no neat and tidy stacks here. Reiner sifted through the piles quickly, giving most of the papers just a cursory appraisal and pausing only if something looked immediately promising—anything with the words Braun, marriage, wedding, or Reiner would do. But none of it appeared to have anything to do with birth or marriage until he got to the very bottom of the tub and found a yellowy brown envelope with the words ‘kids’ birth certificates’ written across it in red marker. His pulse thrummed in his neck as he pulled out the contents of the envelope. This was it.  
  
Annie’s was on top. Name: Annie Elisabeth Leonhart—Funny, Reiner had always just assumed Annie was short for something fancier, like Annabelle or Annalise. Date of Birth: March 22nd, 1998. Mother’s name: Vanessa Leonhart. Father’s name: August Leonhart. There was other information on it, but nothing that interested Reiner.  
  
He flipped eagerly, nervously to the next document. Name: Reiner Wolfgang Braun. Date of Birth: August 1st, 1996. Mother’s name: Vanessa Braun. Father’s name: —  
  
There was no name. There wasn’t even a note like _no name provided_ or _not specified_ , it was just blank.  
  
An icy numbness crested over Reiner like a wave of arctic sea. He was weightless and adrift, unmoored from the central truth that had carried him through life, that he and his family were exactly what they appeared to be. It was a lie. The fairytale perfection of their family story—sweethearts then wedding then Reiner then Annie—was merely an invention. A bedtime story. He’d thought he was prepared to learn that he was born a bastard, and maybe he would have been if that was all there was to it, but he never would have guessed that Dad was not his father. And that’s what it meant, he thought, because what else could it mean that there was no father’s name on his birth certificate?  
  
He really was Reiner Braun. Reiner Braun, son of Vanessa and nobody, half-brother of Annie Leonhart. And what did that make Dad to him? Step-father? Adopted father?  
  
As the initial shock of the revelation ebbed away, another feeling flowed in to take its place, something Reiner couldn’t reduce to just a word or two. It was like he’d emerged from a hall full of funny mirrors, the kind they have at a carnivals, only he’d been trapped inside it so long that the real world now looked loopy and distorted to him, and nobody else could see it. He wasn’t supposed to see it. Mom and “Dad” never meant for him to know the truth, they would have him locked in that funhouse forever.  
  
Reiner realized that he could never let either of them know what he discovered. Because he needed everything to stay the same, even if it would never feel the same, not to him. He could bear changes inside him far better than changes outside. And he couldn’t tell Annie. Not yet, at least. She was already too cynical for a girl so young, telling her that their family was any less idyllic than it seemed and that he was anything less than one-hundred percent her big brother was something Reiner refused to do.  
  
With hands that were just barely shaking, he slid the birth certificates back into the envelope and returned the envelope to the bottom of the plastic tub where he’d found it. He’d just pushed the box back under the bed when a muffled crash broke through the bubble of silence that had grown around him. Then the yelling started.  
  
“Reiner,” Annie said, appearing at the door with a grimace of distress on her face and Luna squeezed to her chest with both hands. “She sounds really mad this time. Reiner, I’m scared.” Last night’s dream notwithstanding, fear wasn’t something Annie readily admitted, so Reiner took her claim seriously.  
  
He followed her out into the living room where the commotion from next door was always loudest so he could hear exactly what she meant. His brain was still swimming in the discovery he’d just made. His body felt light and insubstantial, as if some essential part of him had fallen away and was living outside of him now. All day long he’d been seesawing relentlessly, dizzyingly, between two monstrous worries, and now at last they were converging upon him, yet he experienced no fear.  
  
From the living room, their neighbor’s screams were like peals of thunder. Most of the consonants were lost as they passed through the wall, but some of the words were still semi-intelligible: worthless (or possibly useless), bastard (probably not in the same sense that Annie had used it earlier), and a word beginning with F that Reiner wasn’t supposed to know but did anyway.  
  
“Should we call the police?” Annie asked.  
  
“No,” said Reiner. “They might not believe us. Dad will be home soon. He’s a police officer so we can tell him directly.” It was easier than he thought it would be to just keep calling the man Dad like always.  
  
“Okay,” Annie said, though her frown indicated this was not the answer she wanted. “Can we go outside on the balcony so we don’t have to listen to it? I don’t want to hear this. She’s making him sad.”  
  
Reiner didn’t want to hear it either. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll grab our coats.”  
  
Remembering how cold it was outside, he also grabbed the afghan that was draped over the back of the couch and he and Annie huddled together under it on the tiny balcony. The yelling was barely audible from out here; Reiner could pretend it was just a television set with the volume turned up. Pretending wasn’t so bad. He would tell his (not really) Dad about the woman next door, of course, but maybe he could pretend the other thing away. Pretend he didn’t know the truth and eventually it would be like he really didn’t.  
  
They passed what felt like an interminable length of time without speaking a word. There were no words for an occasion like this. Annie remained perfectly still at his side until a soft whooshing sound made her twitch and she jabbed a pointy elbow into his ribs.  
  
“Reiner, look,” she whispered.  
  
He knew where she meant without her having to say it and his eyes traveled over to the next balcony. Through the striping bars of the cast iron guardrails he saw Mrs. Hoover’s son, sitting in a corner the same way he sat under the jungle gym at school. His face was buried in his arms, which rested on his knees. Still no jacket.  
  
Reiner was struck breathless and dumb. This was his chance to make up for recess. What should he do? But before he could get his brain to spit out an answer, Annie acted.  
  
“Hey you!” she called in a projected whisper. “Hey! Boy!”  
  
The boy lifted his face and looked around for someone else she might be talking to before pointing a finger at himself and mouthing, “Me?”  
  
Annie’s head bobbed an affirmative. “Are you okay? Do you want to come over?”  
  
“Annie!” Reiner chided under his breath. “We aren’t allowed to let anyone in the apartment.” Even as he recited the rule he could feel himself wanting to break it. Every rule had an exception, right?  
  
“The balcony doesn’t count as the apartment,” she said with certainty. Then she turned back to their neighbor. “So do you want to?”  
  
“I can’t,” he said, letting them hear his voice for the first time. It was a soft voice, plaintive and glum, but Reiner thought it sounded kind. “My mom won’t let me leave the apartment,” the boy said.  
  
A pang of disappointment prickled in Reiner’s stomach for almost a full second before Annie called out, “Why don’t you just jump across?”  
  
Reiner gaped at her, horrified. “What are you talking about? Don’t ask him to do that! He’ll fall and get hurt! Or killed!”  
  
“We’re only two floors up,” she said. “And he’s got long arms and legs for it. Do you think you could make it?” she asked the boy.  
  
He eyed the gap between the balconies uncertainly and then said, “I think... probably. I’m pretty good at jumping and climbing.”  
  
“Then jump on over,” said Annie. “My brother and I can catch your arms. Right, Reiner?”  
  
Every bit of reason Reiner possessed told him this was a terrible idea with no possible good outcome. And yet he didn’t want to tell the boy not to jump. He wanted to choose instinct over reason—which was really just another word for thinking too much, and thinking too much meant thinking about _that_. “Yeah,” he said. “We’ll catch you. I promise.” And just by saying it, he knew that they would.  
  
The boy stood up, unfurling his long limbs and stretching to a height more befitting a fourth or fifth grader than a first grader. There was something graceful and vaguely feline in the way he climbed up onto the guardrail and balanced himself in a taut crouch. Reiner wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and took his place next to Annie, who had to stand on the bottom bar of the guardrail just to get her arms over. They were in position to catch the boy now and he was in position to jump. With an efficient, froggy bound, the boy launched himself and for the split second he was airborne, Reiner felt his heart stop in his chest. His hands, however, did not hesitate and he snagged the boy’s left wrist as Annie snagged the right—he was lighter than he looked—and together they helped him up and over. Incredibly, the whole maneuver played out as flawlessly as a stunt in a movie.  
  
“That... was a little bit scary,” the boy said, bent over to catch his breath. “Oh right, I’m Bertolt Hoover.”  
  
Then he straightened back up and Reiner got his first close up look at the boy who’d been lingering in his thoughts, Bertolt Hoover. His face was dominated by an oversized aquiline nose that was not at all unattractive. His eyes—bottle glass green—were downturned and doleful and he had a messy thatch of black hair brushed down on his forehead. He was tall, of course, and more than a little weedy, but there was something inexplicably endearing about the way he carried himself, like he hadn’t yet gotten used to moving around in such a lanky body. It made Reiner want to protect him, or maybe just give him a hug. Was that a strange thing to feel?  
  
He realized he was just staring and knew he’d better say something to Bertolt or else he would seem like a weirdo. “I’m Reiner and this is Annie,” he said, but when he turned to indicate his sister, she wasn’t there. “Well, the girl who was just here was Annie,” he corrected.  
  
The glass door opened with a _whoosh_ and Annie reappeared toting the first aid kit that they kept in the bathroom. “Lean down so I can take care of your cut,” she said, setting the lunchbox sized kit near Bertolt’s feet and crouching to open it. “I’m Annie.” She didn’t say another word, just took out a box of bandaids and some gauze pads and a tube of antibacterial ointment and went to work with the composed professionalism of a doctor.  
  
Reiner hadn’t even noticed the wound—an oozing inch-long slice just above Bertolt’s right eyebrow—until Annie started treating it. Shame flared hotly up his neck to his face. How could he have missed it? Looking more carefully now, he saw dark spots of blood on Bertolt’s Scooby-Doo shirt and understood that this injury had happened well before the jump. He also saw the dark purple bruise that had blossomed on Bertolt’s arm where the rock had hit him at recess. The kid was a mess. And to top it all off, his hair was wet and gave off the faint, astringent odor of the stuff doctors rubbed on skin before giving a shot.  
  
“What happened to you?” Reiner asked solemnly.  
  
Bertolt didn’t answer, not because he was shy or embarrassed but because at that moment he wasn’t paying any attention at all to Reiner. Bertolt was staring only at Annie, utterly transfixed, like someone who’d lived his whole life in the mountains seeing the ocean for the first time. An unknowable warm emotion illuminated Bertolt’s features as if it were being projected from a place deep inside of him—his heart or his belly—and though Reiner knew he should have felt embarrassed to witness this moment, he found that he couldn’t look away. For some reason, the way he was looking at Annie made Bertolt Hoover radiantly beautiful.  
  
“There you go,” Annie said after pressing a bandaid in place over the cut. “Now it won’t get infected.” She had no idea the effect she had on him. Bertolt blinked at her, but said nothing, prompting her to comment. “You don’t say very much, do you? That’s okay.” A pause, and then more gently, “Is it because your mom hits you?”  
  
Reiner’s breath hitched in his throat. _Dammit, Annie_ , he thought, _don’t you know when to keep your mouth shut?_  
  
Bertolt’s eyes went wider. “She doesn’t hit me,” he objected meekly. “I swear she doesn’t. I just make her mad a lot, that’s all. She yells and throws things at the wall, but never at me. And after she stops being mad she’s really sweet to me. Honest.” Sweat beaded his face despite the cold.  
  
“She doesn’t sound very sweet from our place,” Annie said skeptically. “Our Dad is a cop, you know. We can tell him your mom is mean and he’ll make her stop.”  
  
“No!” Bertolt’s voice had force behind it now and he flapped his hands in protest. “Please don’t tell anybody! Please! If the police find out they won’t understand. They’ll think it’s her fault and they’ll take me away. I don’t want to live in an orphanage. Please, please don’t tell anyone!”  
  
The fear in his tone was so real it made the center of Reiner’s chest ache. With some hesitation he said, “I... won’t tell anyone. I promise.” This felt like a promise he shouldn’t be making and Annie shot him a frown, but Reiner couldn’t bear to cause Bertolt any more pain.  
  
“I guess I won’t tell either,” Annie said reluctantly. “Unless I find out she hit you.” She thrust a pointed finger in his face to demonstrate that she was serious. “If she hits you I’m telling. Now let’s get under the blanket ‘cause it’s cold out here.” And with that she grabbed Bertolt by the hand and dragged him down to a sit. Then she wrapped the afghan around them and beckoned Reiner to join.  
  
They were three peas in a toasty pod, their bodies pressed together, heating the air around them. Bertolt was in the middle and got the most benefit from this because he needed it most. Reiner felt very aware of his own heartbeat, though he didn’t know why it should be thumping so loudly, and he heard Bertolt’s breaths, deep and even. It made him feel peaceful. He could have stayed like this for an hour or more and not felt like any talking was needed, but Annie apparently couldn’t.  
  
“You don’t have a dad, Bertolt,” she said, not a question but a statement, delivered without a trace of pity. “Did he die or did your parents get divorced?”  
  
“Annie, that’s rude!” Reiner hissed, because it _was_ rude, but he was also reacting on a more visceral level to her bringing up the subject of missing fathers. He’d made the decision to isolate that thought in a far corner of his brain, wall it off and seal it up and never visit it again. Now Annie threatened to break it free.  
  
“It’s okay,” Bertolt said. “He went away when I was really little and I don’t know what happened to him. But I don’t even remember him so it’s not like I miss him or anything. My mom used to get really upset when I’d ask about him so eventually I just stopped asking. And now I don’t really care anymore.”  
  
The softness of his voice, however, indicated to Reiner that he did in fact care. How could he possibly not care? How could he not want to know what kind of man his father was and why he didn’t want his son? Maybe Bertolt Hoover was trying to bury those feelings, just as Reiner intended to do, and keep them locked away because it was the only means to protect his heart. Or Maybe Bertolt Hoover was made of tougher stuff than Reiner gave him credit for.  
  
“You can share our Dad if you want,” said Annie, like she was offering him her most beloved treasure. “He’s the best Dad in the world.”  
  
Right on that cue, the glass door opened and Dad stuck his head outside to greet them. “Hey kids, I’m home.” His eyebrows lifted in surprise when he noticed there was an extra. “Well, hello. Who might you be?”  
  
“This is Bertolt Hoover from next door,” Reiner said, anticipating Bertolt’s shyness.  
  
“He’s our friend,” Annie added, which made his cheeks bloom scarlet. “Can he stay for dinner?”  
  
Dad smiled indulgently at her. “I’ll have to go and talk to Bertolt’s mother first, but if she says it’s okay I don’t see why not. In the meantime, you kids really should come in out of this cold.” He ducked back inside, leaving the door open for them to follow.  
  
To Reiner’s bemusement, Dad hadn’t mentioned the breach of rules that must have led to this neighbor boy being on their balcony—he certainly wouldn’t have guessed that his well behaved children had goaded him to arrive by a dangerous feat of acrobatics. No less perplexing, was how little effort it took for Reiner to think of this man as Dad and interact with him like always. He still looked the same, though the way Reiner looked at him had altered—he no longer strained to find elusive traces of himself in those features, which was an odd sort of relief as he didn’t have to wonder why he never found any. To Dad, nothing was different; he’d always known that Reiner was not his true son and knowing that made it easier for Reiner to keep on playing his part.  
  
Annie stood first and tugged Bertolt up by the arm, an act to which he offered no resistance, and Reiner got the distinct impression that Bertolt would have followed her anywhere she asked. It wasn’t unusual for him to be impressed by his little sister—she was frighteningly smart and disarmingly honest, sometimes in a good way—but this was the first time he found himself truly in awe of her. That she could earn this shy and fragile-looking boy’s adoration and trust without even trying was astounding. Reiner felt a twinge of what he thought, just for a half-second, might be jealousy, but it evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.  
  
“I hope I won’t get in trouble for this,” Bertolt mumbled as Annie led him into the inviting warmth of the apartment. His fidgety gait belied far more worry than his words indicated.  
  
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “Our Dad won’t let that happen.”  
  
Dad hadn’t left yet to go speak with Mrs. Hoover. He was in the kitchen, setting the timer on the oven for whatever dish was inside—Reiner didn’t really care what it was, since he was an eager omnivore. Mom, newly arrived and still wrapped up in her long tan coat, was toeing off an uncomfortable-looking pair of shoes on the landing. As soon as her feet were bare and her jacket hanging on a hook, she let her shoulders go slack and heaved a sigh of exhaustion. “Glad that day is over,” she said. Then she loped up behind Dad and wrapped her arms around him, stretching herself taller to hook her chin over his shoulder.  
  
Reiner observed this from the living room. It was a strange thing, how one new piece of information could change the way he looked at both of them. If the revelation had somewhat diminished the sense of mystery surrounding Dad, it had only multiplied the mystery of Mom. Who was Vanessa Leonhart anyways? Or a more fitting question might be, who was Vanessa Braun? What kind of woman had she been before she met August Leonhart? Reiner was so used to seeing her only as a mother that he’d taken it for granted that she’d always been one, as if she’d come into the world a fully-formed adult on the day that he was born. But the truth he learned today made him think, for the first time, about the life she’d had before she had this family. Had she planned on having him, or had he been a surprise? Had she wanted him?  
  
“Hey kids, how was school?” she asked, beaming as she stepped into the living room.  
  
“SSDD,” Annie said, thoroughly bored with the question. “Same stuff, different day.” Then her face brightened. “But after we got home, we got to meet Bertolt from next door. Dad says he can stay for dinner.”  
  
Reiner watched Bertolt shrink two inches shorter as his posture buckled shyly. Did he have to be so stupidly cute? “It’s nice to meet you,” Bertolt said very softly, doing the same little finger-wave he’d done the first time Reiner tried to talk to him.  
  
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Mom said sweetly. “I’m Mrs. Leonhart, Reiner and Annie’s mother. How old are you Bertolt? Ten? Eleven?”  
  
“I’m seven.” His voice was barely audible.  
  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” said Mom. She stooped down to hear him better, but before he had a chance to repeat his answer, something made her expression go blank. “Oh. That cut on your forehead.”  
  
Bertolt squirmed uncomfortably under her concerned gaze and Reiner felt a sympathetic discomfort for him. “I... I broke a glass,” he said.  
  
“What about your arm?” Mom asked.  
  
“I fell on a rock.”  
  
“I see.” Mom’s voice was very slow and deliberate when she said this, like she was a detective who’d just found an important clue and was analyzing it even as she spoke. She stood up and smiled down at him, a gentle, almost sad smile. “Well, it sounds like you’ve had a tough week, Bertolt, but we’re happy to have you with us for dinner. I hope you like macaroni and cheese.” Then she walked back to the kitchen with quick, purposeful strides, grabbed Dad by the elbow, and pulled him into their bedroom. The door closed behind them.  
  
“What do you suppose that’s about?” Annie asked, scrunching her nose up suspiciously.  
  
“I don’t know,” said Reiner. His heartbeat had quickened. Someone was going to get in trouble, he could feel it. The three of them had broken too many rules today. _Let it be me_ , he thought. _If somebody has to get in trouble, let it be me and not Annie or Bertolt._  
  
Neither Annie nor Bertolt was acting particularly troubled by the adults’ actions. The two of them had situated themselves on the couch and Annie was furiously thumbing the television remote, changing channels so fast she couldn’t have time to see what was on one before flipping to another. Bertolt watched her with a moony expression.  
  
“Your mom is beautiful,” he said. “You look like her, Annie.”  
  
“Naw, I’m more like my Dad,” she said, still pumping through channels even when she turned to look at him instead of the screen.  
  
Reiner turned his gaze back to the closed door, knowing that any second now, punishment would come. When Mom and Dad emerged, however, their expressions weren’t angry. Not exactly. Rather, they looked like they were trying very hard to appear calm and happy in front of the kids but were really feeling something else. Reiner had seen this before, last spring, when Grandpa Leonhart was in the hospital and Mom and Dad kept saying he would be fine, but in the end he died anyways.  
  
“Kids, your father is going to go next door and have a talk with Bertolt’s mother,” said Mom. The fact that she’d called him ‘your father’ was ominous. “I’m just going to heat up some green beans and cinnamon apples to go with dinner.”  
  
Dad was still in his police uniform and Reiner couldn’t help noticing that he grabbed his badge off the kitchen counter before he left. Uh-oh. Was this it? Was this the beginning of that scenario Bertolt was dreading, where he would be taken from his mother and sent to an orphanage? Reiner's stomach was a bag of squirming eels. How had Mom and Dad known? Was it his fault?  
  
He sat down on the couch next to Bertolt and tried his best to act normal. What was normal? Annie had finally stopped flipping channels once she found one that was playing a cartoon. It was an old Disney movie, _Mickey and the Beanstalk_ , which Reiner had probably seen a dozen times before. But at least it was a distraction.  
  
“Have you seen it?” Annie was asking Bertolt.  
  
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I don’t like giants. They’re kind of scary.”  
  
Annie made a dismissive _pfft_ noise. “The giant in this movie isn’t scary at all. Actually, he’s kind of stupid. But my favorite part is when Donald and Goofy are singing about all the food they’re going to eat after Mickey sells their cow. By the way, you’re going to love our Dad’s mac ‘n’ cheese. It’s the best.” Anything to do with Dad, _her_ Dad, was always the best according to Annie.  
  
Reiner was too nervous to have an appetite. He decided that Bertolt and Annie must really be nervous, too, but were trying their hardest not to show it. That would explain why Annie was talking so much. She was never this friendly with anyone, at least not that Reiner had seen.  
  
When at last the front door opened, the apartment had filled with the mingled odors of cinnamon and crisping cheese. The first thing Dad did was give Mom a kiss, just a quick one, like a silent confirmation of some secret promise fulfilled. Then he called into the living room, “Alright kids, who’s ready for dinner?”  
  
The kids went to wash their hands in the bathroom sink and when they arrived at the kitchen table there was an extra plate and an extra chair. It was the office chair from the desk in Mom and Dad’s bedroom, the one Reiner and Annie had been told repeatedly was not for them to spin around in, and when Bertolt sat in it, he looked surprisingly small. A boy king, tender and wispy.  
  
“This all looks so yummy,” he said excitedly.  
  
“Eat as much as you want,” said Dad, grinning a real smile now. “There’s more than plenty. You know, I just had a talk with your mom, Bertolt.” Bertolt froze immediately, a spoonful of apples paused in front of his gaping mouth. “Since my Annie and Reiner have taken such a shine to you so quickly, I asked your mom if it would be okay for you to come home with them after school and hang out with them. You kids would be supervised, of course—I’ve been meaning to go to an earlier shift at work for a while now—but that way they could play with you every day. That is, if you would like to.”  
  
The apples slid off Bertolt’s spoon as his grip went slack. “My... my mom really said I could come here after school?”  
  
“She sure did,” said Dad, proudly. “I told her that is would be the best arrangement, for _everybody_ , and she agreed.”  
  
There was an odd emphasis in the last sentence that Reiner took for coded grown-up talk, aimed at Mom, but he didn’t care what it meant. All that mattered was that Bertolt was going to be here with them, every school day from now on. He felt like his heart might burst, but in a good way. Maybe, just maybe, the universe had sent him this new friend today to balance out his world. The whole situation with his dream and finding his birth certificate had gone the worst possible way, with him learning things he didn’t want to know. But then Bertolt Hoover had happened in the best possible way. Reiner knew that the world as he experienced it had been fundamentally and inexorably altered today, but maybe it would still be okay. Maybe change didn’t have to always be a bad thing.  
  
—  
  
In his bed that night, Reiner found it impossible to sleep. There was just too much going on inside his head for him to wrangle it all into submission. The entire scene in Mom and Dad’s bedroom felt far away and dreamlike now, muted in the wake of Bertolt’s arrival. Maybe it hadn’t even happened. Maybe it was just another part of the dream. Reiner didn’t know anymore. He didn’t know. What he did know was that he would get to see Bertolt Hoover again tomorrow. And again the next day. And Bertolt’s mother wouldn’t have a chance to yell and scream at him.  
  
Reiner also knew, at last, what it was he had seen in Bertolt’s eyes as he looked at Annie for the first time, hours ago: love at first sight. Reiner knew the expression but had never thought about it—matters of love didn’t interest him in the least. It was fairytale stuff. Didn’t happen in real life. Except that it did, he’d seen it today with his own eyes. Bertolt Hoover had fallen in love with Annie Leonhart at first sight, right before Reiner’s eyes.  
  
He couldn’t get the image of it out of his mind.  
  
As he lay awake, Bertolt’s exultant, lovestruck face still brilliant in his imagination, Reiner wondered, idly, what an outsider would have made of him staring at the neighbor boy. Did he have the same look when he first saw Bertolt—really saw him—that Bertolt had when he first saw Annie?


End file.
